City will review security protocols in wake of shooting

TUSCALOOSA | City officials are reviewing security protocols to determine whether additional safety measures should be adopted after the early Tuesday morning rampage by a gunman at Temerson Square.

By Jason MortonStaff Writer

TUSCALOOSA | City officials are reviewing security protocols to determine whether additional safety measures should be adopted after the early Tuesday morning rampage by a gunman at Temerson Square.The attention to security also is expected to influence the decisions reached by a committee formed Tuesday to determine the feasibility of creating two entertainment districts around the city's popular nightspots.One of the areas that may be established as an entertainment district, which would allow drinkers to bring open alcoholic beverages into the streets, is Temerson Square.A 27-member committee, formed by a unanimous vote of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, is charged with deciding whether such districts should be created. Council members believe the alleged acts of accused gunman Nathan Van Wilkins of Northport should bear little influence on the decisions of the committee.“I think we need to move forward,” said Councilman Kip Tyner, who also chairs the Public Safety Committee. “It was a horrible tragedy, but I don't think we should lose sight of what an entertainment district could mean to the downtown area and the Strip.”The Strip on University Boulevard is the other likely location of an entertainment district. An act of the 2012 Alabama Legislature allows cities the size of Tuscaloosa to create two half-mile by half-mile districts within its jurisdiction.The act allows municipalities to establish designated areas where open beverage laws would be relaxed or suspended, meaning patrons could leave bars and restaurants with open containers of alcohol while walking on public streets within certain areas of the city.Municipalities also have the authority to limit when these districts would be active and create additional rules to govern them.Determining these rules of operation is the role of the committee, which is comprised of bar and restaurant owners, retail business owners, anti-drug representatives and city staff members, among others.Tyner said he supports creating the districts and hoped the committee would find a way to implement them practically and safely.Councilman Lee Garrison, who represents the Strip and Temerson Square as part of District 4, said that he didn't see the shooting as relevant to the districts' creation.“I see (Tuesday morning) as a lightning strike,” Garrison said. “I don't think the entertainment district issue is related to this shooting.”Council President Harrison Taylor supported the perspective of Police Chief Steve Anderson, who believes there is little that any police department can do to thwart a person hell-bent on destruction.Like the council members, Anderson said he didn't see the shooting as directly related to the future of an entertainment district.However, with Tuesday morning's shooting following two shootings this spring on the Strip so closely, the chief is willing to look at ways a future act of violence could be thwarted.“I don't think anything would've headed this (shooting) off aside from us knowing that he was going to strike,” Anderson said. “But we're going to review our security measures and protocols to see if there's something we can do better to protect those areas and feel safe.”Mayor Walt Maddox, who spent hours in Temerson Square after he was alerted to the bloodshed, said he saw the shooting as more of a reason to examine the safety procedures in use by the Tuscaloosa Police Department to ensure those who go to the proposed entertainment districts remain safe at all times.The mayor, who opened Tuesday night's City Council meeting with a moment of silence for the shooting victims, noted that authorities still were in the early stages of the investigation.Because of the infancy of the probe, no decisions will be made immediately, he said. First, a review of the current policies and how they relate to the response to Tuesday morning's violence is needed.“We're going to do an internal debriefing to ensure we have done all that's within reason regarding this matter,” Maddox said before the council meeting, “but it's premature to outline specific recommendations with the investigation being less than 24 hours old.“I think it's important we take a step back, we analyze every detail of this investigation and — from that — we put in reasonable measures to ensure a safe environment.”